Can Ginger Beat Acid Blockers?

Can Ginger Beat Out The Multi-Billion Dollar Acid Blockers?




Posted on: Sunday, August 19th 2012 at 5:00 am

Written by: Sayer Ji, founder





Did you know that the multi-billion drug category known as "acid
blockers," despite being used by millions around the world daily, may
not work as well as the humble ginger plant in relieving symptoms of
indigestion and heartburn?

Ginger is a spice, a food, and has been used as a medicine safely for
millennia by a wide range of world cultures. Research on the health
benefits of ginger is simply staggering in its depth and breadth. In
fact, the health benefits of ginger
have been studied extensively for over 100 health conditions or
symptoms, making it one of the world's most versatile, evidence-based
remedies.

The biomedical literature on acid blockers,
on the other hand, is rife with examples of the many adverse health
effects that come with blocking stomach acid production with xenobiotic,
patented drugs, i.e. proton pump inhibitors and H2 antagonists.
What started out as "heartburn" – which in its chronic form is now
called "acid reflux" or "gastroesophageal reflux disorder" – soon
becomes stomach acid barrier dysfunction, when these drugs remove the acid which protects us from infection, helps to break down food, and facilitate the absorption of minerals and nutrients.


The list of 30+ harms is extensive, but here are a few of the most well-established adverse effects you may not be aware of:

• 
  Clostridium Infections
  
• 
  Diarrhea
  
• 
  Pneumonia
  
• 
  Bone Fractures
  
• 
  Gastric Lesions and Cancer
  

Back to our friend – our "plant ally" – ginger. What happens when
Pharma meets Farm in a biomedical face-off? When acid-blocking drugs are
compared in efficacy to our little spicy ginger root? Well, this is
what the journal Molecular Research and Food Nutrition found back in 2007 ...

Titled, "Inhibition of gastric H+, K+-ATPase and Helicobacter pylori
growth by phenolic antioxidants of Zingiber officinale," the study set
out to determine the anti-ulcer and anti-Helicobacter plyori (a bacteria
commonly implicated in ulcer formation) capacity of ginger extracts
versus conventional acid-blocking agents, such as lansoprazole (trade
name Prevacid).
Researchers found that one fraction of ginger exhibited six- to
eight-fold better potency over lansoprazole at inhibiting acid
production (specifically, gastric cell proton potassium ATPase
activity).

But, this was not all. Ginger was also found to have potent
antioxidant properties, protecting both lipids from peroxidation
(rancidity) and DNA damage, leading the researchers to conclude that
specific fractions within ginger have "potential in-expensive multistep
blockers against ulcer."

Also, whereas drugs which interfere and/or remove the stomach acid
barrier also deactivate acid-dependent protein-digesting (proteolytic
enzymes) such as pancreatic protease, and increases the risk of
infection as a result of the loss of the anti-infective effects of the
stomach's acid, ginger actually has [i]an exactly opposite set of benefits:
it contains a proteolytic enzyme several hundred times more potent than
the one found in papaya (papain) and has broad-spectrum antibacterial, antiviral and antiparasitic properties, to name but only a few of its 40+ distinct pharmacological actions.

While this study focused on specific isolates of the whole ginger
plant, it must be remembered that whole plants are not drugs, nor should
be reduced to "nutraceutical" magic-bullets in order to become new
palliative drug alternatives, which is to say, symptom-repressors,
leaving the real healing job of changing the underlying nutritional,
environmental, emotional context to lead to the problem in the first
place, unchanged.

While taking a ginger pill is usually a better choice than a chemical
one, for most folks, ginger should be consumed in whole forms, in
moderate and balanced quantities, along with a nourishing, organic,
whole-food and traditional foods diet, in order to move beyond the
paradigm of popping pills, or proprietary fractions of herbs in order to
balance out the pendulum of extremes.

Either way, I think its time with awaken from the sorcery-like spell of pharmacia
(Greek word meaning: drug, potion, charm, spell, poison), and realize
everything we already need is likely in our backyard, our refrigerators
or cupboards – if not altogether within ourselves.




Source:-
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/can-ginger-beat-out-multi-billion-dollar-acid-blockers